The Chessman

by Dolores Gordon-Smith

  ‘What do you know about the Chessman?’

  ‘The Chessman?’ Lucas looked puzzled. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  With a sigh of relief, Jack reached out his hand. ‘Come on, Lucas. Let’s go down.’

  ‘What if I did murder Ryle?’

  ‘You haven’t murdered anyone.’

  Jerry Lucas shook his head, as if to dislodge a fly, and looked at Jack’s outstretched hand uncomprehendingly. ‘I need a hand,’ said Jack.

  Reluctantly, Jerry Lucas stood up. ‘If I go down,’ he said uncertainly. ‘I’ll have to face all that again. The police think I killed Ryle. You think I killed Ryle.’

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  Jack could see the battle between doubt and hope in Lucas’s face. Lucas slowly reached out and took Jack’s hand. ‘I’ve told you what I did. Dad told me never to tell anyone. You could be dangerous.’

  Jack decided not to answer. With Lucas’s help he stood up, wincing as his foot touched the ground.

  ‘You go first,’ he said as if it had been agreed. ‘I might fall.’

  They got down the ladder and onto the timber walkway. Jack felt Jerry Lucas stiffen as he looked down onto the bells. He suddenly knew he was in great danger. One push from Lucas could send him over, onto the dangerously enticing smooth bronze of the bells, spread out below. The best – perhaps the only – defence was to offer none at all.

  ‘You’ll have to help me across the planks, I’m afraid,’ said Jack, leaning on him. ‘I don’t think I can make it alone.’

  For a fraction of a second Jerry Lucas paused, then took the weight of Jack’s arm round his shoulders. It was a relief when they were across the timbers and on the ladder down to the belfry.

  From below came the sound of voices.

  ‘Haldean! Haldean, are you up there?’ It was Ashley.

  ‘We’re in the belfry,’ Jack called back. ‘Lucas is here.’

  Jerry Lucas froze, then turned and looked at Jack in horror. ‘It’s the police. You tricked me. I trusted you.’

  Ashley appeared at the top of the stairs. ‘Hello, Haldean,’ he said anxiously. He looked at Jack, standing with his arm on Lucas’s shoulder. ‘Is everything all right? Hernshaw, the church warden, told me he’d seen you and Dr Lucas go up the tower.’ Jerry Lucas walked towards him like an automaton. ‘You’ve come for me. I can’t stand it any longer.’ His voice cracked. ‘You know what I’ve done. Go on. Get it over with. I killed Ryle.’

  Ashley looked at him with blank astonishment, then turned to Haldean. ‘What on earth’s he talking about?’

  ‘Ryle was blackmailing him,’ said Jack wearily. ‘He thinks we suspect him of murdering Ryle.’

  ‘For God’s sake, stop!’ begged Lucas. ‘Arrest me! Get it over with. I’m going to hang.’

  ‘For killing Ryle?’ demanded Ashley. ‘Don’t be so bloody stupid, man. You haven’t killed Ryle, or anyone else, by the look of you. I shouldn’t think you’d have the nerve,’ he added in an undertone.

  The complete assurance in Ashley’s voice took Jack by surprise. ‘You sound very certain,’ said Jack.

  ‘Of course I’m certain. Ryle was arrested in Harwich at nine o’clock this morning on suspicion of theft. He had over six thousand pounds on him. Blackmail will come as a nice addition to the charge sheet. Oh, for Pete’s sake,’ he added in disgust. For Jerry Lucas had broken down in tears.

  ELEVEN

  Jack walked stiffly up the steps to the front door of Lucas’s house. Although his leg felt much better, he wouldn’t be sorry to sit down.

  ‘You … you’d better come in,’ said Lucas. Jack followed him into the tiled hall.

  Dr Lucas came out of the surgery.

  ‘Jerry? I wasn’t expecting you back so soon.’ Dr Lucas stepped back in surprise as he saw his son’s companion. ‘Major Haldean?’

  Lucas motioned with his hand, trying to quiet his father. ‘It’s all over, Dad.’ He gestured towards Jack. ‘He knows all about it. He knows what happened in the war.’

  Dr Lucas sagged and seemed to age visibly. ‘I think you will understand, Major, that you are not welcome here.’

  ‘No, Dad!’ said Jerry quickly. He looked appealingly at Jack. ‘Can you explain? Please stay.’

  Dr Lucas shrugged and silently led the way into a drawing room that had a cold, unused air about it. A table like a sarcophagus flanked one wall, its gleaming surface threatening anyone to defile it with fingerprints. A horsehair sofa and two armchairs, all with antimacassars, stood at an exact distance from each other round a Turkish carpet in front of an empty grate. ‘Perhaps,’ he said quietly, ‘you will tell me what you know.’

  ‘He knows about me,’ interjected Jerry. ‘Sit down, Haldean. That leg must be giving you gyp.’ He faced his father. ‘Haldean knows Ryle blackmailed us.’

  Dr Lucas looked at his son in horror. ‘You’re talking wildly, Jerry. Goodness knows what you’ve been tricked into saying, but—’

  ‘Cut it out, Dad,’ said Jerry wearily. ‘He knows, I tell you.’

  Dr Lucas turned on Jack. ‘And what business is it of yours, Major Haldean, may I ask?’

  ‘Officially none,’ replied Jack, sinking gratefully into an armchair. ‘But haven’t you realized, Doctor, that both you and your son have been under suspicion of murdering Ryle?’

  Dr Lucas stared. ‘That’s incredible, sir! It’s totally untrue.’

  ‘I know,’ said Haldean coolly. ‘Ryle was arrested this morning which does rather let you out. If he hadn’t been … well, it was fairly obvious that you were covering something up and it was known that you’d had at least one meeting with Ryle that you didn’t want talked about. Things were looking a bit black.’

  Dr Lucas sank back in his chair. ‘Ryle’s alive? That creature is alive?’

  ‘Very much so.’

  ‘But why should anyone think that I – I – killed him? What motive could I have?’

  Dr Lucas was starting to irritate Jack. ‘He had a hold over you. That was clear. The body in the church is obviously that of a drug addict. As a doctor you have ready access to drugs.’ He watched as Dr Lucas flushed. ‘Ryle had six thousand pounds on him. I don’t suppose you gave it to him, did you?’

  There was a stunned silence. ‘Six thousand pounds?’ Dr Lucas stared at him. ‘Even if I sold everything I had I wouldn’t be able to raise anything like that sum. I’m a general practitioner, not a Harley Street specialist. You can put that idea out of your head, Major.’

  Jack nodded. He knew that a doctor in a village or small town usually earned around seven hundred pounds a year, enough to be comfortable but not wealthy by any stretch of the imagination. ‘You could’ve inherited some money.’

  Jerry Lucas nearly laughed. ‘We used to have some investments, but it’s all gone. Ryle’s been bleeding us at the rate of thirty pounds a month.’ He rested his forehead on his hand. ‘I didn’t want to pay up, Dad. I never wanted you to.’

  ‘What choice did we have?’ demanded Dr Lucas tartly. ‘Reputation means everything to a doctor.’ He got up impatiently and walked to the window. ‘I tried. I went to see Sir Matthew. I thought he’d be shocked if I even hinted what his chauffeur was up to, but he merely laughed. He was splitting the money with Ryle. He was never satisfied. He demanded more and more. I couldn’t pay and he threatened exposure.’

  He let out a shuddering breath. ‘My God! When he was taken ill, I felt as if I’d been let out of prison.’ He turned to his son. ‘We couldn’t let it get out, Jerry.’

  ‘What? That I’m a coward?’

  ‘We would’ve been ruined! Both of us.’

  Jack looked at Jerry Lucas. ‘It isn’t a question of cowardice. Your nerve cracked.’

  His voice was firm and carried weight. He knew Jerry Lucas was concentrating intently on his words.

  ‘You were under a terrific strain and everyone has a limit. You reached yours. It’s happened to better men than you, Lucas.’ Myself included, God help me, he added t
o himself. ‘I know some of them. Nothing’s on record. Sir Matthew Vardon’s dead, Ryle’s under arrest and you’re in the clear.’

  Jerry Lucas took a deep breath and slumped back in his chair. ‘It’s over?’

  Was it over? Jack looked at Dr Lucas thoughtfully. ‘What about the Chessman, Doctor?’

  ‘The Chessman?’ Dr Lucas looked bewildered. ‘I don’t know what you mean. What’s chess got to do with anything?’

  ‘Chess?’ asked Jerry Lucas. ‘Dad plays occasionally but …’ He trailed off. ‘I’m sorry. What on earth are you talking about?’

  ‘I understand Lady Vardon received a couple of letters from someone calling himself the Chessman.’

  Jerry Lucas looked interested, but Dr Lucas’s voice was rich with disgust. ‘Oh, those! They were obviously the work of a crank. I told Lady Vardon as much. I wouldn’t waste your time on nonsense like that, Major. I imagine Sir Matthew crossed someone – he was not a pleasant man, by any manner of means – and they took this childish way of seeking some sort of revenge. As Sir Matthew’s doctor, I can assure you that the suggestion that he died of anything other than natural causes is absurd.’

  And there it was. Dr Lucas might have murdered Sir Matthew Vardon but Jack really didn’t think he had. And, although it wasn’t proof, his reaction to the mention of the Chessman was so sincere, Jack couldn’t honestly doubt his complete ignorance of the matter. Ryle, who Jerry Lucas had every reason to want to murder, was alive.

  ‘Is it over?’ asked Jerry anxiously.

  Jack got to his feet and clapped a hand on Jerry’s shoulder. ‘Yes, old man. For you, it’s over.’

  Superintendent Ashley looked at the man on the opposite side of the table from him. ‘So you’re Mr Jonathan Ryle, are you? Please sit down. Shut the door, will you, Sergeant? We thought you were dead, Mr Ryle.’

  Ryle shifted uneasily and shot a covert glance at Ashley. He distrusted polite coppers even more than ordinary ones. You knew they were leading up to something. ‘Is that why I’m here?’ he demanded. ‘For not being dead? Blimey, what a country.’

  ‘We’re delighted you’re not dead, Mr Ryle, but it does leave us with a problem. You can’t tell us who the body in the church belonged to, can you?’

  ‘Here, you can’t pin that on me,’ snarled Ryle, seriously alarmed. ‘I’ve been in Holland since Monday and I can prove it. What the hell are you charging me with, anyway?’

  ‘Well,’ said Ashley smoothly, tapping the suitcase on the table in front of him. ‘There is the small matter of this money.’ He nodded to the sergeant who produced a key and opened the case. Bundles of crisp white five-pound notes lay stacked within. ‘Six thousand pounds is a lot of money to be carrying round with you, Mr Ryle. Perhaps you’d like to tell me how you got it?’

  Ryle sniffed and rubbed his nose with his hand. ‘That’s mine, see? I won it.’

  ‘I think not,’ said Ashley quietly. ‘You stole it, didn’t you, Mr Ryle?’

  Ryle flung back his head and for a moment the startling resemblance between him and Sir Matthew blazed out. ‘I bleeding well didn’t.’ He dropped his face on to his hands and the likeness faded. ‘I never thieved no money. I never did.’

  ‘We know you didn’t get it from blackmailing Dr Lucas. He only paid you thirty pounds a month.’

  ‘I had to split that …’ Ryle flinched as he realized what he had said and cowered back in his chair. ‘Look, Guv’nor, who’s been talking? It wasn’t blackmail. I didn’t want to do it. It wasn’t my idea!’

  Ashley raised his eyebrows. ‘Care to tell me whose idea it was?’

  Ryle sat back, thinking hard. ‘Give me a fag, Guv, and I’ll level with you.’

  Ashley pushed his cigarette case and a box of matches across the table and Ryle lit one, holding the cigarette behind the palm of his hand.

  ‘I’d got kicked out of the army. Some stores went missing and the buggers pinned it on me. I did a bit of time, then messed round for a bit, looking for a job. I’d always been handy with cars, but something always seemed to go wrong. Last time my services were dispensed with, as you might say, I decided to see what was doing at home. Mum was dead but my Aunty Bessie put me right. Mum had been in service, years ago, with a posh family in Sussex called Vardon and Aunty Bessie said Vardon was my real father.’

  He sucked hard on his cigarette. ‘To cut a long story short, I asked a young lady in a library to see if there was a family called Vardon and she gave me their address, so I went to Croxton Ferriers. And a miserable little one-horse dump it is, too,’ he added gloomily. ‘On the way I ran into that bleeder, Castradon, and got a job with him. I hadn’t been there a week before I recognized my father. Well, I’d dropped lucky. He told me to find out what I could about Castradon, then come to him. He liked the idea of having me around.’

  God knows why, thought Ashley, and forced himself to concentrate once more.

  ‘My father was all right. I told him about recognizing young Lucas, and he told me to put the screws on to see what happened. It was like finding money in the street. Old Dr Lucas cut up rough with my father but he soon got into line. And then everything seemed to hot up. I told my father I didn’t think Lucas could pay any more, but he was screwing them hard.’

  ‘And that’s when,’ said Ashley, mindful of a conversation he’d had with Jack, ‘he got you to steal the diamonds for him.’

  ‘Oh hell.’ Ryle lit another cigarette with trembling hands. ‘He needed money. God knows why, but he needed a lot of money, fast. He told me when he and his missus would be taking a walk and got me to spring out at them. He said if I swiped the stones he could collect on the insurance and then, later on, when the fuss had died down, I could fence them for him. He knew a place in Amsterdam. He had it all worked out. I hid the diamonds in a petrol can in the garage.’

  ‘He left you in charge of the diamonds?’ asked Ashley, disbelievingly.

  ‘Honest truth, he did. He made me sign a paper to say I’d swiped them and then, after I’d fenced them for him, he was going to give it me back with a cut of the take. He said it was foolproof, but he went and croaked. Well, I knew where the paper was but do you think I could get at it? There’s a secret drawer in the desk in his bedroom but even when I got up there I couldn’t get the hang of the catch. After a couple of weeks I thought, sod this for a game of soldiers, and decided to go to Amsterdam on my own account. It all went fine until you rozzers picked me up.’

  ‘You left Croxton Ferriers in a bit of a hurry.’

  ‘Too right I did. I had Castradon after me. He can’t half hit. He’s a maniac.’ Ryle sniffed self-righteously. ‘He needs locking up, that bloke. Bleeding dangerous, he is. I got the diamonds and lit out for Holland as fast as I could. But I don’t know nothing about this dead geezer and don’t you go laying it on me that I do.’ He paused hopefully. ‘Can I go now?’

  Ashley raised his eyebrows. ‘Go? I don’t think you’re going anywhere for a very long time, my lad.’

  ‘But I’ve done nothing wrong!’

  Ashley ticked the points off on his fingers. ‘There’s assault, blackmail and grand larceny.’

  ‘But I didn’t steal the stones!’

  ‘Oh yes? You’ve just admitted that you signed a statement to say that you did. I think you’re going to be a guest of ours for some time, Mr Ryle.’ Ashley turned to the sergeant. ‘Take him away.’

  As the Atlantic churned green and cold under the bows of the Cunard liner Mauretania, Lady Esmé Vardon turned to walk down the companionway. Damn! The man who had been so openly attentive on the train out of Chicago was standing by the rail. She hoped he wasn’t going to make a nuisance of himself. She didn’t want to start anything, not with Tom waiting for her. The man turned and raised his hat.

  ‘Lady Vardon? I didn’t realize we were going to be travelling companions all the way to England. Will you have dinner with me tonight?’

  ‘I think not,’ she said coolly. He was attractive, but shipboard romances were a
hazard she didn’t want to face. Lady Vardon. It sounded kind of nice …

  ‘I think I see how this is going to work,’ said Ashley, going down on one knee and squinting under the kneehole of the massive writing-desk. ‘If we lower the lid – like so – I think we should find another drawer at the back. Now, what have we got in here? Nothing. Can you see how it works, Haldean?’

  Jack stirred himself from the solid four-poster bed against which he had been leaning and walked across to the huge burr walnut escritoire. Privately he was marvelling at the late Sir Matthew’s taste in bedroom furnishings. That anyone should choose voluntarily to sleep in a room that looked like Act 1 – The Haunted Grange was beyond his comprehension.

  ‘It would be so like dear Matthew to hide his papers away,’ said Lady Vardon with just the suspicion of a sniff. ‘Poor Matthew. He was like a boy in so many ways. And so secretive, too, wasn’t he?’ she added, looking at Thomas. ‘I’m going to ask Matthew about it tonight,’ she continued.

  ‘You’re going to ask who?’ asked Jack, startled.

  ‘I sit with Mrs Parry-Jones. She’s Welsh. She attributes her gifts to her Celtic blood.’ Lady Vardon sighed wistfully. ‘She has such an insight into the things that are beyond. She has been such a comfort to me since Matthew passed over. He seems so happy in his new existence. Since the veil of illusion has been torn away he has attained real wisdom.’

  Jack stooped over the desk, his long fingers searching for the hidden catch. His face was impassive but his dark eyes danced with rich enjoyment. Ashley turned away hurriedly before he could exchange glances and disgrace himself with laughter.

  ‘If I could ask about the diamonds, Lady Vardon,’ he said, rather too quickly to be polite. ‘They were your own property, were they?’

  ‘Yes, indeed. They were my dear father’s wedding gift. Matthew promised to get me some more but he said it would take time to find stones of equal quality. He didn’t want me to have second-best. He was always so thoughtful in such unexpected ways.’